Motion tracking in After Effects is Super powerful and you can yield some Fantastic results with it and you know What it's actually a lot easier than you Might think I'm Tom Graham for envato Tuts plus and in this video that's Exactly what I'm going to show you how To do we're going to take some text in After Effects and we're going to track It to motion let's jump into it [Music] So the first thing we need to do to Create this effect is we need to start With some footage that we need to track So we'll just grab our footage here and Drag it into the new composition icon Just down here which will create a new Composition from our footage and you can See here we've just got this drone shot Of this man walking down the mountain Well I guess hiking down the mountain And we want to add some text here that We can track to the movement of him so The first thing we need to do is add our Text which we can do by right clicking Going new text and we'll just call this Hiking for the time being So now if we play that through you can See the text just sits statically Atop The footage and it doesn't track along With it so obviously that's where Tracking comes in and you can do that by Selecting the layer that we want to Track hitting right click going to the
Track and stabilize menu and then Selecting track motion Now when this comes up you'll see uh the Tracker box opens up here on the right Hand side and then we're given a Tracking point in the middle so the Tracking point you get is made up of Three things it's made up of the search Area which is the larger box on the Outside here and that tells After Effects which area you want to search in So it'll search within this box but Exclude everything around it and that Just makes sure that you're not being Too processor intensive now the middle Box that's going to be the feature Region that's telling After Effects what Features to look at within the box and Then the crosshairs are your actual Tracking point So making sure that we're at the start Of our timeline here with our player Head we're just going to grab the box Here and put it on uh the region where We want to track now for me I'm going to Use the hood here on the back of his Shirt as I think it's probably got the Most contrast with this guy behind it And you do want to find an area of good Contrast to try and track things through More easily if you try and track Something through on a mountain here or In his darker clothes we're not really Going to get a a solid tracking point
The whole way through the piece so try And find something with nice contrast And if I click this to zoom in you can See there's some nice contrast between The sky and then his hood and then his Head here so we'll just kind of add it Here and you may have to try this a Couple of times just to get a nice Smooth track but we'll we'll give this One a go and see if this actually works For us I think this uh this is a good Little area maybe we'll give this a Little bit more of a search area here Now when you're ready and you're happy With your tracking point you can go over Into the tracker window and hit the play Button down here which will analyze Forward and it will just track frame by Frame you want to keep a bit of a half Eye on it as we go through just to make Sure that tracking Point stays where you Want it to stay Now while this is going this is a great Opportunity to tell you about envato Elements which is our sponsor for this Video envato elements is a super easy to Use subscription-based service that Gives you access to millions of creative Assets just like this piece of stock Footage and you get unlimited downloads Of all of those creative assets as well And there's things like stock footage Video templates stock photos music fonts And heaps more so to learn more about
Envato elements today check out the link In the description below or go to Elements.invado.com now that our tracker Has finished and we're satisfied that it Stayed in the same place all the way Through we can we can apply that to our Piece of footage but first we just want To edit the Target and basically that Just means we're making sure that the Tracking data is going to where we want It to go so if you hit edit Target you Can see we've only got one option here Which is our hiking layer but if you had Multiple options you know you can select The one that you need to select so we'll Select hiking we'll hit OK and then down Here we'll just hit apply now it's going To ask us here to apply Dimensions to Both X and Y which is the you know X and Y coordinates so we'll hit okay because We want to do that and now you can see If we play it through and I'm just going To select command a here to select all And hit U just to close these down just A little bit more screen real estate if We play this through you can see here That it's tracking with a man walking Down the hill So from here you can go through and you Can change things like the scale of the The text you can change the Anchor Point To move it up or you know around In a better position for your Composition but you know what happens if
You want to bring another asset in but You don't want to change all of that Tracking data or have to redo the track Well it's really easy I'll just grab This little heart rate box that I got From envato elements I'll drag this in And I'll just roughly position it where I want it to be let's just say we want It to be roughly above here Now in this position I can just grab the Pickwick which is this little uh you Know squirrely thing down here and drag That over to the hiking layer and now You'll see that they're moving in unison So that piece of Animation that I've Brought in this heart rate box is now Tracked perfectly to the tracker one That we already had for our hiking layer So there we go that's tracking in After Effects it's super easy super simple and You can get a pretty pretty decent uh Effect all with a couple of clicks but Now that we've got this nice little Animation in from envato elements the Heart rate box here I think we can Change our hiking word here to be Something a little bit more Dynamic and We can change that text without changing The tracking data which is really good So I'm going to go to our hiking layer Here and just highlight that and then Call it BPM Uh because we want to add a little heart Rate monitor here and I'm just going to
Put a semicolon there as well so now That's tracking along with it as we had So what do I need to do I want to add The BPM data here so I'm going to right Click and go new text and I want to add A new text layer here now this can Literally be anything I'm just going to Hit J to add a placeholder here and I'm Going to bring that J layer in to line With our BPM here now the BPM I think We've made it slightly smaller so if I Go to scale yep that's right we're at 68 So I'm going to make that the same scale For our new text and then I'm just going To make sure that this is all lined up Correctly so I want to make a dynamic Number counter here to replicate the Heart rate so I'm going to hit the J Layer here I'll make sure that's Selected and then I'm going to go up Into my effects and presets and find Something called slider control I'm Going to drag slider control onto our J Layer and then I'm going to twirl down This J layout to find text and then Source text I'm going to grab the Pickwick for the source text and then I'm going to move that up to our slider Control here and you'll see that that's Now changed to a zero and not a j Because now we're going to define a Number range Before I do that though I just want to Make sure that this is again in the
Right position as things have moved Around a little so I'm just going to Make sure that this is selected and We'll bring it down in line here so I Think that will work pretty well we'll Just zoom out to make sure that that Fits but as you can see it's now not Moving around because we haven't had That tracking data so we'll just make Our playhead at the start of our Timeline again we'll select this we'll Just go in make sure it's exactly where We want it to be and we'll again parent That to our BPM which used to be our Hiking text so that's now tracked Because that's where our tracking data Was So to make a number counter here we want To twirl this down and we want to go to Effects and slider control And then I'm going to go to the start of Our timeline here and on the slider Control I'm going to create a keyframe And I'm going to put this to let's say 164. for me that seems right-ish I'm not A hiker I'm an editor someone tell me in The comments if that's high or a low Heart rate for hiking so we've set our 164 there as our base heart rate but we Want that to fluctuate throughout so I'm Going to find a middle point here and I'm going to change that to maybe let's Say the heart rate's going down because They're going down the hill a little bit
Let's go to 162 but then they start to Run a little bit faster and I'll move That to let's say 166. So let's play that through now and see What that looks like Okay you can see immediately we've got a Problem we've got a whole bunch of Decimals here and we don't have round Numbers we want it to be a nice round Number well it's easy enough to fix that With a nice little expression so over on Your slider control here make sure You're holding option and then you want To click on the stopwatch which will Open up your Expressions dialog box you Want to make sure that you're adding to This dialog already and you want to Start with maths with a capital m dot R-o-n-d dot round and then hit enter It's going to add an extra parenthesis Here an extra close parenthesis so just Delete that and make sure you go to the End of your expression and add another Parenthesis click out and now we've got Nice round numbers so we've gone from 64 63 we're going down to 62 here and then We're going to go all the way back up to 66 I think by the end of it so that Works pretty well Now the last thing we need to do to just Sell this we need to change maybe some Scales here so we're going to grab the Heart rate box and we'll scale that up a Little bit and we'll just with our
Anchor Point move that around Basically just get it the way you want It so it fits and I also want this to Animate on the BPM to animate on so We'll just do that with a basic Typewriter effect Going up here into our effects and Presets and going typewriter and I'll Drag that first onto our BPM layer then I'm going to select that BPM layer hit U On the keyboard to bring up anything That has a keyframe against it so there I can find our typewriter which is this Range selector and I'm just going to Bring the second Point down here and Then I'll just zoom in and we'll make This animate on when we want it to so It's kind of when this box expands here So I'll grab these two keyframes and Just drag them down Play it through see if that works that Works for me and then I also want the Heart rate to animate on as well so That'll happen just about this last Keyframe again adding a typewriter Effect onto our top layer here where the Cartrade is selecting the layer hitting You on the keyboard to bring up those Keyframes and then just dragging that Last keyframe down to fit And I think we can just tighten that up Just a little bit That's looking pretty good let's play it Back
[Music] I didn't lie to you it's actually pretty Easy isn't it let me know what you're Working on down in the comments I'd love To know what you're using motion Trackers in After Effects for and if you Haven't already subscribed to the envato Touch plus YouTube channel hit that Little red subscribe button down below As we're putting out content like this Daily also if you want to know any other Quick tips and tricks in programs like After effects Premiere Pro DaVinci Resolve let me know down in the comments As well alright until next time happy Motion tracking [Music] Foreign [Music]
